Janus Thinking

Most people go to an art museum to appreciate fine art and broaden their cultural horizons. Is this still the case when the art on display is known to be fake? Next year the Brooklyn Museum in New York will put on a show featuring pieces of Coptic sculpture known to be counterfeit. Acquired between the late 1950s and early 1970s, these pieces have never before been shown to the public, and their provenance is dubious at best. One example from a recent article in the New York Sun:

One New York dealer, Jerome Eisenberg, acknowledged in a phone interview that he had sold the museum one piece now considered to be fake, a roundel with a border of palm fronds and a central bust. The museum acquired the piece in 1960.

Asked where he bought the roundel, Mr. Eisenberg said that he purchased it from a “very reliable, very ethical” dealer in Cairo, a Copt named Kamel Hammouda. Asked if he knew where Mr. Hammouda got the sculpture, Mr. Eisenberg said that it was against the rules of the trade at the time to ask such questions.

“When you’re buying antiquities in Egypt or Beirut or Turkey or Algeria, you don’t ask the dealer who dug things up,” he said.

Hopefully the museum will provide enough information in the exhibition such that visitors can learn what characteristics make these pieces forgeries–that will certainly foster the connoisseurship of Egyptian art.

[Photo by Dan Diffendale]

Connoisseurship, the art of appreciating fine things and understanding their provenance, importance and distinguishing characteristics, is certainly a worthy way to spend one’s time. Connoisseurs learn about objects that interest them and use that knowledge not (only) to impress people but to make others excited and see what they find so unique and interesting.

Perhaps there’s an element of schadenfreude to it, but I’m always intrigued when self-professed “connoisseurs” reveal a lack of understanding that puts into question the knowledge they think they have. Two upcoming films about the ‘Judgment of Paris,’ the 1976 French wine jury that improbably found a selection of American wines altogether superior to French wines, reveals the conceit on the part of some of the jurors. From an article in Canada’s Globe and Mail:

No nose? Talk about calling the kettle noir. But then, I’ve always advocated calling connoisseurs “cons” for short. I’ve attended far too many professional blind tastings to have much respect for people who boast about their tasting abilities.

Am I being too harsh? I think not. Frankly, to confuse an aristocratic Bâtard-Montrachet from continental-climate Burgundy with a warm-weather Napa chardonnay is the wine equivalent of mistaking a Massenet opera for Cats on Broadway. The tasters knew it, too, which is why some tried to suppress or dismiss the Paris results after the bottles came out of their paper bags

As wines can differ so much by vintage, can we be really be critical of the connoisseur who occasionally gets it wrong? I’d say as long as the stakes are ‘impressing people at a dinner party’ and not ’substantially misvaluing cases of wine for auction,’ it doesn’t matter that much if the connoisseur is occassionally wrong. He or she will be right most of the time, imparting wisdom and helping others learn about something worthy of connoisseurship.

Trying to lead others in a humane way is a challenging task. “With success comes responsibility,” they say. But what does this responsibility actually entail? Should well-intentioned leaders actually call themselves “ethical”?

To understand how ethics is applied in the practice of leadership, I usually start by acknowledging the idea that humans – as imperfect beings – are not fully capable of grasping the full spectrum of their ethical code. Because this life purpose will always remain a bit of a black box, we can only move toward this goal but can never actually reach it.

Leaders within organisations face the same ethical dilemma. They have to pursue their organisation’s purpose through their own choice of strategy development, which is inherently based on personal choice and interpretation. This also means it is easily distorted.

So how do leaders cope with these uncertainties and matters of interpretation? To start, they stay true to their own interpretation. But then they must engage with others within the organisation in order to understand how they perceive the leader’s strategy.

This engagement process requires them to be respectful and empathetic of others’ opinions while still acting purposefully in progressing toward true organisational purpose and to their own sense of ethical leadership.

We’ve seen gem-encrusted phones before, but here’s something new that toes the line between luxury and excess. Most people just use a cell phone to make and receive calls–in many markets they can get one free. But Dior recently released a pair of phones that add a little sparkle to one’s regular regime. Actually a lot of sparkle–their new top of the line “Lady Dior” phone is encrusted with 3251 carats (in 640 stones) of Swarovski crystals and comes with a crocodile-skin sheath and a mini-phone that women can attach to the outside of their handbags so they don’t need to dig when they get a call. The phone costs $26,000 (a version without the crystals and crocodile costs $5000).

Much like luxury waters, some people will find this phone irresistible and interpret it as worthy of its price, the very best phone money can buy. However I think most people will stick with phones that price in the hundreds rather than thousands.

Tiffany was in the news this week, not for a new line of diamond rings or earrings but because it lost the long-running lawsuit it’s had with eBay about the sale of counterfeit Tiffany goods on the site. Tiffany maintains that eBay knowingly encouraged sellers to dilute Tiffany’s value and trademarks by not putting a stop to counterfeit Tiffany listings on the site. Rather than resting with eBay, the burden for identifying counterfeit goods rests with Tiffany, who have to report counterfeit listings to eBay and have eBay remove them. EBay argues that like YouTube it’s up to the trademark holder to report false listings, and they already take enough action against counterfeit items because these are bad for their marketplace.

This American ruling is interesting because it diverges from recent findings in European courts. In Germany a ruling for Rolex found that eBay must make greater preventative measures against the sale of counterfeit Rolexes, and in France eBay was ordered to pay Louis Vuitton 40 million euros in damages for the sale of counterfeit goods.

Counterfeit goods damage brand value–if discovered, they’ll upset people who purchase them and receive them as gifts; they mock the effort that people make to show their love and appreciation for one another. The takeaway from this case is that one needs to be careful when make purchases from a source that hasn’t been completely vetted. When a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

[Photo by minxlj]